Sun Considers Releasing Solaris In Segments

VoidOfReality writes: "Check out this article on Infoworld about the open source release of Solaris 8. It seems Sun is running into some problems they forgot to think about when they initially announced the release." Hey, at least they're teaming up with Collab.Net to make it happen.

Comments

I was going to moderate, but then...

[trims]

...I saw some of the massive ignorant egos strutting around, and couldn't just let it pass. So I post.

:-)

Look, people, Sun will never OpenSource Solaris. I do take issue with them (in particular, the marketing 'droids) initially toutting Solaris as being OpenSourced, but they have backed off this - you will note that everything in their current campaign talks about a "Free Source License" and similar terms. Yes, some people may confuse it with the Free Software movement, but face it people, 99% of people associate the word free with cost (as in beer), and not with libre (as in GNU).

Also, look at what Sun is trying to target. Essentially, they make money on hardware and services for Solaris, and no money on the OS (even when they charge for it, it's insignificant in the scheme of things). By using the SCSL, there are the following benefits:

• Sun gets a new revenue stream from people wanting to make use of customized Solaris (embeded OSes and such, primarily). By opening Solaris under the SCSL, Sun makes it alot easier for VARs to evaluate using Solaris as a base technology, and the VARs save lots of money on R&D costs.
• Many people get to see how an industrial-grade OS is written (warts and niceties, both). Academics may very well use chunks of it for teaching purposes, and in general, you get a better-informed developer community. This helps both Sun and the Sun-oriented developer community.
• Sun retains control over Solaris branding and standardization. All the problems Linux has over standardized distros and kernel levels is avoided. The *BSDs do the same thing - one organization has veto power over what goes into the OS.
• You do get bug fixes. Yes, Sun doesn't have to incorporate them into the next release of Solaris, and redistribution is limited - but see below for some notes about redistribution of such fixes.
• Sun retains it's Intellectual Rights. Yeah, I know we'd all love it if we could get our gubby mitts on some of the nice stuff in Solaris, but honestly, I can see why Sun isn't interested in it. There's no real payback for them that the SCSL can't provide. Remember, Sun's goals are different than the OpenSource movements.

As a side note, please note a couple of things about distributing mods to Solaris 8 (and using Solaris code):

1. You can redistribute diffs however you want. Context-diffs are a bit of a fuzzy area (are the context "included code"?), but certainly, output from normal diff solaris_file.h modsol_file.h is allowed. You don't have to go through Sun to distribute these changes. You own the copyright to the diff contexts, and can license it however you want (though it better be compatible with the end-user SCSL in order to be usable by others).
2. Fixed software containing Solaris code must be redistributed by Sun. That is, if the Solaris grep has a bug, and you fix it, and want to distribute the whole thing, you have to submit it to Sun, who will then redistribute it on their "secure" web site. Sun doesn't own your mods - you still do. They can't use your mod in Solaris(tm) until they get permission (and possibly pay) you to do so. The way I read things, you could even conceivably charge for the fix without owing Sun royalties, though that may be wrong (I'd have to have a serious lawyer re-read the agreement). But it has to be redistributed by Sun, not you.

Yes, the Free Solaris Source Code program isn't an OpenSource movement by Sun. It has it's uses, and for that I'm happy. It definitely is limited, but for those target markets, it's a Good Thing. Maybe someday they truly will Open Source Solaris, but only when Sun sees that the advantages for Sun to Open Source outweigh the benefits they get from SCSL.

-Erik

BSD - SCSL

[rothwell]

Funny how Sun's operating systems used to be open source. SunOS was BSD -- they even gave you a compiler and the kernel source. Bill Joy wrote the BSD license -- which later proved to his benefit when he founded Sun.

Now the latest incarnation of their OS -- Solaris 8 or 9 or 2.9 or 3.14159256 or whatever -- is "opening" a little, ahtough SCSL is hardly an open source license. It's more of a way to contaminate other companies' "clean rooms" -- you can peek at it, but can't change it. Once you peek at it, you're infected with Sun Intellectual Property and should be careful about "appropriating" their ideas in your own code. If you do change the Solaris source, you have to give it to Sun to lock in a vault at the bottom of the atlantic ocean right next to the secret underwater illuminati bowling alley. Okay, so maybe they'll actually include changes in the next release or patch or whatever -- let's say they do -- you still won't own copyright or anything about your code. You have to get permission from Sun to distribute your changes. With GPL, you at least retain rights to what you do. With SCSL, you become unpaid employees of Sun Microsystems.

I'm dogging on SCSL here, but there is at least one nice thing about it, if they ever actually release the source: people writing programs for Solaris can at least look in the code to see why the published APIs are acting all funny, or to see how to best interface with the Solaris VFS, etc.

That's more than we can say for Microsoft. Not a whole lot more, but more.

Solaris is a nice enough OS. I wish it had some Linux-type features, such as /etc/ld/so.conf. But it scales well, and these days the price is right (free for 8 processors). UltraSparc processors perform a little more poorly than current x86, PPC and Alpha processors, though, and Solaris x86 is kind of a joke.

With Linux running on pretty much all of the commodity hardware these days (not as much as NetBSD, though, I think), I think it stands to become the standard Unix. Companies are probably more afraid to contribute to BSD systems than GPL ones, because competitors can snatch up their BSD-licensed code and use it against them via closed-source products. With GPL, companies cannot take the code private, so the original developers' IP is protected better.

It will be nice to have Unix largely unified again. There will always be special versions -- that's part of the beauty of Unix. Cary's UniCOS and other variants for special hardware will probably exist for a long time, because they're designed to take advantage of specific hardware. But the alure of a single API -- write once, compile and run anywhere -- is very tempting. IBM's even making Linux available on its 390 machines. BSD includes linux emulation, as does Solaris.

Good times!